


Not Anymore

by thenewbacklog



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Jon's Beholding powers, M/M, Nightmares, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:19:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23556688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewbacklog/pseuds/thenewbacklog
Summary: On nightmares, and being seen, and knowing you're not alone. (Beholding powers used, on occasion, to help.)Martin gave a statement about Prentiss' siege of his apartment, but in s1 neither he nor Jon understood the consequences of giving/taking a statement. Now that Martin's away from the Lonely and things are as okay as they're likely to get, he dreams about Prentiss again.As always, Jon watches him in the dream. As always, it feels a bit like the time Elias got into his head.This time, Jon is there when he wakes up.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Kudos: 73





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't get enough of fics where Beholding powers are used to help, so I decided to try my hand at one. I know the world of the show isn't kind, but the characters can be. And that matters.
> 
> Heads up, this starts with Martin having a nightmare about the time Prentiss trapped him at home for two weeks. It might hit close to home, given everything.
> 
> If you want to skip this part, it starts at the beginning of the fic and ends at "Martin opened his eyes." 
> 
> All you really need to know is that all the chaos in 158-159 stirs things up for Martin, and, in the first few days at the safehouse, he has a Prentiss nightmare for the first time in a while. Since Martin gave a statement about it to Jon, Jon's there, and his staring reminds Martin of what Elias did at the end of s3. But Jon's presence still helps, since it means that, this time, Martin isn't alone. Someone sees him, and someone will come looking.

Jon’s gaze bores into him as he curls in the corner farthest from the door, a half-eaten can of peaches on the floor by his feet. He has to really think about it to know how long he’s been here, time stopped meaning much around the fifth day, and the tally marks he’d made on a scrap of paper had lapsed by day ten. He thinks (hopes) that was yesterday, or he’ll run out of food earlier than he thought.

The knocking continues as it has for days. Polite. Measured. Almost mocking, in its steadiness.

Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.

Would it be so bad if he just let her in? Got it over with?

(It would, it _really_ would, he doesn’t mean it he doesn’t mean it _make her stop, he just wants to sleep_.)

He’s cried a lot, since the third day.  Once it really sank in.

The worst thing about those weeks (well, one of the worst things) was the knowledge that no one was going to come for him. He was completely alone as he frantically crammed towels under the door, completely alone as he rationed his food, completely alone as he slept fitfully and flipped the useless light switches as though it would do him any good. And, odds were, he was going to die alone.

But Jon is there. Still, silent, watching. But there, through it all.

Martin had forgotten how weird it was to have Jon staring at him like that, to see Jon, for once, the way his victims (he tries not to use that word, oh, how he tries) would. The way he’d looked at Elias, nearly a year ago, as Elias clawed through his mind and brought forward things he’d never wanted to know.

He shrinks back further into the corner, away from Prentiss’ relentless knocking, and Jon’s gaze driving static into his skin.

But he isn’t alone.

He isn’t alone, this is a dream, and this is _Jon_ , and Jon will be there for him, with him, when he wakes up. He _can_ wake up, this time.

Martin opened his eyes.

There were arms around him, and legs tangled with his own. A body against his back. Martin struggled, trying to get free.

The arms let go of him, and the body shifted away.

“Martin?”

Martin turned to face the voice.

“Hey, hey, it’s all right. You’re all right.”

Martin blinked. “Jon?”

Martin shuffled closer. Jon’s eyes shone, cat-like, in the dark.

Jon held an arm out tentatively, as though expecting Martin to refuse, and Martin fit himself against Jon’s side, his head on his chest. He could hear Jon’s heart beat steadily under him. So this was real, then. He’d been right.

“Martin, I-”

Martin closed his eyes tightly, and buried his face in Jon’s shirt. Jon carded his free hand through Martin’s hair.

“Ah. Talk about it in the morning?”

Martin nodded. Hopefully, Jon would forget by the time they woke up.

It took him a while to go back to sleep. Jon's hand never stopped moving through his hair.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been languishing in my docs folder for weeks, and ended up splitting into two chapters. I have plans for another chapter or two where they talk it out, and a post-160 coda, but who knows what I'll actually end up doing?

The next morning, Martin woke slowly. He could feel Jon’s arm still around him, and Jon’s other hand resting on his head. What a world that was, where he and Jon, of all people, held each other in their sleep like it was normal. Jon had pulled the blankets over their shoulders in the night, and the cold air on Martin’s face made him all the more grateful for the warmth. 

He chanced a look at Jon’s face, grayish in the early morning light. His eyes were red-rimmed, and the bags under them deeper than ever. Martin wondered if Jon had slept at all, and decided he probably wouldn’t like the answer.

Jon noticed him move, and his face twitched into something that was almost a smile. Damn. Caught.

“Morning,” said Martin, cautiously. There was no getting out of this, Jon clearly wanted to talk about it. He had that look he got when he was working out how to ask something tactfully, like he was trying to put on a pair of shoes that were just barely too small.

Martin really, really didn’t want to talk about it.

“Morning,” said Jon, who started to shift up and away until Martin tightened his grip, then let go with an exaggerated sigh. Jon looked back on his way out of the room, and stared distantly at Martin for almost a full minute before jerking his head a little and wandering toward the kitchen. Martin watched him go, and curled deeper under the blankets, shifting into the warm spot Jon had left behind like it could help him avoid the conversation that was obviously coming.

The thing was, Martin hadn’t had a Prentiss nightmare in ages. Not since before the Unknowing, he thought, although he wasn’t sure. It’s just… the chaos, the new environment, coming out of the Lonely, fleeing London. He and Jon had peeled away the layer he’d built between himself and the world, and that brought him closer to the feelings he’d blocked off when he’d worked with Peter. His emotions, when he found them, were a little raw after so much time away from the surface.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he’d dream about Prentiss again, after so long. But it was. Somehow, it was.

And Jon was there, as always. Watching.

He and Jon had never talked about it. At first, it seemed like a coincidence. They’d lived in each other’s pockets while Martin was staying in the Archives, so Martin assumed the Jon in his Prentiss nightmares was the result of spending so much time around the real Jon afterward. Neither of them had known, could have known, what giving a statement really meant.

By the time either of them knew enough to suspect something might be going on, Jon had been kidnapped, and there was the Unknowing to think of, and then Tim was gone and Jon was in a coma and his mum died, and then, well.

He and Jon had barely had a full conversation all year.

He heard a clatter and bitten-off swearing a few rooms away, and climbed out of bed. Better go and see what Jon was up to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thenewbacklog on tumblr as well, hit me up if you want to yell about s5 and/or Eldritch Mind Powers


End file.
